


The Littlest Azumane

by Pouler (poulerslashes)



Series: Family Headcanon Theatre [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Family Headcanons, Gen, headcanons run amuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 02:37:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3158036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poulerslashes/pseuds/Pouler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of Family Headcanon Theatre. Asahi and his big brothers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Littlest Azumane

**Author's Note:**

> See series description for more on the family headcanons.

Of the Azumane boys, Asahi was always the smallest. It was to be expected when he was still growing, as he was the youngest, after all. Takeshi was only two years younger than Jun, but Asahi hadn’t come along for another eight years after that, a full decade after his oldest brother.

"It was a bit of a suprise," his mother admitted to him once, which made him try to inhale his tea.

“ _Mom_!” he’d sputtered desperately, and that was the end of the conversation.

"Why can’t you be more like your brothers, Azumane-kun?" A teacher had asked him once in exasperation, when he’d been too nervous to do a class presentation as part of an assignment in middle school. It seemed a reasonable question. At school, Jun was intelligent and composed, Takeshi was outgoing and good-natured, and Asahi didn’t seem to be much like either one.

Two phrases dominated the household throughout Asahi’s young childhood: “Jun,  _no_!” and “Takeshi, be gentle.”

When Asahi was three years old, Jun put a beetle into his bed. His sharp features contorted in fiendish laughter when Asahi realized the tickle on his face was of the six-legged variety and had screamed appropriately. Takeshi had socked Jun right in the gut and let Asahi sleep in his bed for the rest of the week. “Don’t think badly of him,” Takeshi told Asahi at night, when he was snuggled into the crook of Takeshi’s elbow against his ribcage. “He’s just a shithead.” Asahi hadn’t known the severity of the word until he tried to repeat it in front of his mother some days later.

More phrases were added to the Azumane lexicon: “Jun,  _please_!” and “Takeshi, wash your face!” and lastly “Asahi, speak up.”

Jun went away to college when Asahi was eight. After they had packed everything into the car and Jun was ready to leave, Asahi had cried disconsolately with his hands fisted in Jun’s sweater. Jun put a hand on his head and patted it awkwardly. “I’ll come visit over break, okay?” he’d said.

Takeshi pulled Asahi away. “I’ll keep an eye on him.” Takeshi was sixteen at the time. He was broad-shouldered, nearly 190 centimeters tall, on three different teams – basketball, baseball, track. He lifted Asahi as easily as a bag of potatoes and slung him over his shoulder. “Say goodbye to our dear big brother, Asahi.”

Jun was even taller, but he was slim as a rail. His face had gotten more pointed as he got older until he looked like a younger version of their dad – minus the glasses and graying temples. He was in the chess club, the Go club. He’d always gotten the second highest marks in his year.

"Goodbye, brother," Asahi sniffed obediantly, and Jun had grinned at him in exasperation and rubbed his head.

"Don’t be too easy on him," he said to Takeshi. "Don’t let Mom baby him too much."

"Oh, shut up," Takeshi said. "Get out of here."

They bumped their fists together. Their mom kissed Jun on the cheek, Jun and their dad climbed into the car and drove away, and Asahi cried the rest of the day. When Takeshi followed two years later, Asahi was ten, and he managed to keep his tears in until he went to bed that night in the too-quiet house.

Later he’d realized how nice it was to not fight for the shower, how he didn’t worry any more if his shampoo had been replaced with something else, how he could come home from school and watch what he wanted on TV, how he got first dibs on everything – and he certainly could get used to all that. When they came to visit, Asahi spent the first ten minutes indescribably delighted by their company – before the realization sank in, and suddenly he was being wrestled to the ground by Takeshi, or tricked into eating a bar of soap by Jun, and he usually thought to himself,  _why do I even miss these jerks at all?_

Jun got engaged when Asahi was fifteen. At first, he’d been nervous to meet Jun’s fiancee. Who would put up with him? What kind of girl would Jun bring home? But Shio was lovely, nearly as tall as Asahi herself, with short dark hair and a wicked glint to her eyes. She was from Karasuno, Asahi learned, from Jun’s own class. She worked as an actuary for a big life insurance company in the city. Asahi worried about how Jun might treat her – would he glue her hands to her coffee mug, or sew the legs of her jeans closed and replace them in her dresser?

The worry lasted all of thirty minutes into their first meeting, when Jun had tried to put a fruit sticker on the back of Takeshi’s collar, and Shio grabbed him by the ear and pinched hard until he sat on the floor. “I decide who lives and dies for a living, Jun-chan,” she’d said darkly.

She’d gotten the top marks in Jun’s class, Asahi learned later. She’d been the only one to beat him.

"Half the boys were in love with her," Takeshi told Asahi, after the couple had left. "The other half were terrified."

"Which were you?" Asahi asked him.

Takeshi tapped a finger next to his nose and winked at Asahi. “Not really my bag, little brother,” he’d said. Asahi wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it stuck with him a long time. It gave him a little courage a couple years later, when the only person who turned his head turned out to be a little… unconventional.

Even when he reached his full height, Asahi was smaller than both his brothers. Jun towered over him, and Takeshi easily outweighed him. He was used to being small, the littlest Azumane next to his big brothers. But when Shio took him aside before the wedding and told him about what she was planning for his brothers, Asahi couldn’t help but think that maybe a terrifying big sister wouldn’t be so bad.


End file.
